The State of Science

As a child I was fascinated with science. I discovered DNA and cellular organelles at an early age and began reading up on genetics in the 4th grade. I loved science. And, as far as I can tell, science loved me right back. Science, true science is the search for truth, for answers. It was teh strict, stringent rules of the scientific method that brought us electric lights, gasoline engines and nuclear energy.

It is genetics, stem cell research and global warming that have brought science to the level of snake oil salesman. Look at this interesting story about cheating, lying scientists. Facts don't fit your hypothesis? Change the facts. When it all comes crashing down and your experiments can't be replicated, fight, scream, whine in full public view about how persecuted you are for adhering to science rather than religion. Because, buddy, you surely don't want the entire world to know that you have no idea about the scientific method whatsoever.

In science we do not skew data to fit our hypothesis. If the facts don't fit, we have to change our hypothesis. If that shoots our funding down, so be it. If the ONLY way you can make global warming work is to totally forget that our star is our weather engine, then go ahead, fella. Just don't call it science. Call it what it really is, self-hatred and a sly way of being a racist. Climate change has next to nothing to anything man made and everything to do with our star system's place in the universe at this time. Yeah buddy, it's not about you at all. STFU and go do something useful like picking up your garbage strewn yard that you don't mow because you don't want to contribute to "global warming". On second thought, global warming could have everything to do with the hot air escaping out of your empty freakin head. Die in a fire, thank you very much.

Now, the day after I read that interesting story showing the Brady Bunch generation in the lab, I get my monthly Scientific American magazine. Now, I will be frank, I have already canceled any renewal of my years long subscription to this "venerated" scientific journal. They have obviously been sipping from the New Scientist kool-aid. (Yes, religious freaks and scientific zealots have tons in common, but that's for another blog)

The only reason I even opened up the magazine that usually gathers dust until I toss it in the recycle bin is that it had a story on the history on the evolution of the domestic house cat in it. Now the evolution of the house cat is fascinating to me because I am very interested in their behaviour. Once you understand the origins of behaviours of an animal it is very easy to then manipulate them into doing what you want them to do and not shredding the draperies.

Now this is in the first paragraph of the story, which we like to call an abstract, which spells out the point we're trying to make in having our paper published, other than it keeps us from getting fired at whichever university hands us a lab in which to spend our grant money.

Whereas other once wild animals were domesticated for their milk, meat, wool or servile labor, cats contribute virtually nothing in the way of sustenance or work to human endeavor. How, then, did they become commonplace fixtures in our homes?

Hmmm, contribute nothing? Well, it's been historically recognized that cats followed the field mice into human settlements and were revered for keeping the mice out of the food stores. We all know this right? As do the authors of this piece of tripe.

It is almost certainly the case that these house mice attracted cats. But the trash heaps on the outskirts of town were probably just as great a draw, providing year-round pickings for those felines resourceful enough to seek them out. Both these food sources would have encouraged cats to adapt to living with people; in the lingo of evolutionary biology, natural selection favored those cats that were able to cohabitate with humans and thereby gain access to the trash and mice.

So, what is it boys? Are they useless fluffs of fur or did they actually do what we've always supposed they did? Make up your freakin minds between the first two pages of your paper. Please.

This crap passed a peer review to get published in Scientific American. I can only imagine that the review panel consisted of lab buddies and a round of beers at the local watering hole. By the time I was done with the first page of the paper I didn't even care where the house cat originated from (the Middle-East, BTW) or how they used mitochondrial DNA to discover this LIFE-ALTERING fact. The only thing that amazed me by the point I read this,

(Oddly, domestic cats seem to have reached the British Isles before the Romans brought them over—a dispersal that researchers cannot yet explain.)

I was only surprised that they had not thrown in the Scottish story of the Egyptian Princess, Scot coming to Scotland with The Stone of Destiny and bringing a retinue of domesticated cats with her, thus pre-dating the Romans arriving in Great Britain. I mean, it's a story that is thousands of years old in the Gaelic Scots folk lore and the Stone of Destiny really does exist so we can call it a real fact, right? Yeah, just like Area 51 is proof of UFOs.

Just like that.